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While I’m technically ready to start doing all of the adulting that I’ve got planned for the first couple of weeks of the new year, I am glad that today was essentially a “paused” day… where even if I wanted to, nothing significant could really be accomplished. 🤷🏻‍♂️🙂 I didn’t go out last night, nor did I have any company over, but I still didn’t fall asleep until around 3am. And of course I woke up too damn early, so my brain is thankful that the only real work that I’ll be doing today will be the stuff that I can address by mail. Which leaves all of the phone calls for tomorrow. 😳 Yay. 😟

Last night wasn’t totally lonely though. Brianna also stayed at home, although she was also babysitting for her sisters, so we ended up keeping each other company via messages up until the ball dropped at midnight and then a while after. ☺🎉 I think my adulting may be rubbing off on her, because a lot of what we talked about was both of our growing lists of “Shit We Gotta Do” in the next week or two. 😏 I mean, nobody is really a fan of responsibility, but I think it made her feel good (the same way it does me) to spend some of her evening coming up with a game plan of her own. 📒🖊👧🏻

I wish that I didn’t have to take Cassi back home earlier last night, but she did end up staying later than we originally planned. It was a rough, dark, rainy, stressfuldrive up to Columbus in that horrible weather – with 80% of the traffic still breaking the speed limit, and the other 20% either scared, creeping slowly, or completely stopped along side of the highway as they waited for the rain to stop. ☁🌧😯😣😧🙈⛈🌧 While she was here though, we started watching a new Korean rom/com/dram called Strong Girl Bong-soon. It’s strange how easily I take to Korean songs and shows now that I’ve been doing it for a bit. 😁🇰🇷

But yeah… this is kind of a rambling post since it’s been a leisurely kind of day for the most part. All of my upcoming doctor appointments are still heavy in my mind though… I’m just trying to not let them bother me today. 😟 I will say this though. I haven’t been feeling great for the past couple of weeks. 😐 Not awful, but not how I normally feel either. So while I’m not gonna try to predict anything when it comes to my upcoming tests, I think I’m subconsciously getting myself ready for some potentially bad news. 🤷🏻‍♂️

It doesn’t help that I’ve been having a lot of anxiety filled dreams lately as well. 😳 Not exactly nightmares, but dreams that definitely had a negative feel. And twice now I’ve had dreams where I died. 😕 One was strange… I had already passed away, but I was still around to console people and to help with all of the arrangements needed in that sort of circumstance. 😬 But the bad dreams, the specific “not feeling well” things… right now I am choosing to attribute it all to the Wellbutrin that one of my docs put me on. 🤒

I haven’t felt this mentally and physically shitty in a long while. 😔 And it’s so much so that I’m going to stop taking that new med until my next appointment with that doctor, so I can let him know the side effects that I’ve been experiencing. Over the years I’ve probably tried half-a-dozen different meds to help with depression or anxiety, and never have I made it past a month or two before the side effects outweighed the potential benefits – and I’m pretty sure this one will be the same way. 🤨 I’ve also got something more immediate for anxiety, but I haven’t noticed any bad side effects from that one, so perhaps I’ll be able to keep one-out-of-two in my rotation this time.

Alrighty then… time for some football. 🙂🏈 Ready to push the scary thoughts to the back again for now.

I’m not sure how I feel about the weekend falling right before New Year’s Eve. 😟 I think it’s actually going to work out better for me this way, since I’ve already got a January’s worth of medical appointments on my mind, but I can’t even really go about changing my insurance information or anything like that until after the first of the year when the new plan kicks in. 🤨 So I’ll have at least a couple of days to start planning who I need to contact and when, and I might even get a couple days after that since some places might be closed on Monday and/or Tuesday. I’ve just got a lot of upcoming shit… I wanna hit the ground running.

I think I’m gonna have Cassi down for the night tomorrow. She can’t stay on New Year’s Eve since she has to be at work early early, but it would still be nice for her to stay – since not only has it been a little while since she has, but also because it might also be a little while until the next chance – depending on how my month goes and how I’m feeling during any given stretch. 😔

I’ve also decided that I’m going to let her take my Wii and games back up home with her to give to Junior. I can’t remember the last time that I sat down and played any of my games, let alone any of the games on that system that’s almost a decade old now. I could sell it I guess, but I’d hardly get anything for the lot of it… might as well brighten up a kid’s day a bit, eh? 🙂 I’ll probably wait until she’s here to start finding all the bits and bagging it up… with the way I’ve moved stuff about since I last played, it’s hard to say what’s where.

But like I’ve described regarding my friends before… sometimes it’s just nice to have the company, because not only does it provide time to chill and (hopefully) clear the mind of “the now” for a while – something that’s always needed – but it also helps to encourage a little more productivity, since we’re both essentially able to pat each other on the back for our respective jobs well done. 😏

I’m certainly not looking forward to 2019, so a couple more days of “nothing” and some company to distract is probably exactly what I need. So I guess I do know how I’m feeling about it.

I went and saw the new “physician’s assistant” fella yesterday. He first confirmed that Dr Walter is still my doctor of record and that everything will still go through him… but hopefully after this initial “getting to know each other” appointment (for which I’m sure he’ll have to confer with Dr Walter at least this time) he’ll be able to handle most everything while leaving Dr Walter’s time free to help patients that can actually still be helped, patched up, or even repaired. That’s where his time should go.

Thankfully though, I really like this guy. Dr Walter and I have a decade of history from me going to that clinic for the same problem… so, obviously, even starting to get new guy on the same page as us would be impossible in one visit. But that didn’t stop him from intently listening to everything I said, as well as already offering his preliminary thoughts and ideas about my condition and treatment. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but the positive vibes were a pleasant surprise. I mean, it was really a crap shoot (what type of doctor I could have ended up with) but I should have known that their office wouldn’t hire a jackass when not a single one of them already there acts that way.

Okay, so that was the good part of the visit. Nothing has changed yet, but I told him that I appreciated having “new eyes” looking at the situation, and letting him know that I am willing to try changing some things up if he, Dr Walter, and I think that it could help with the problems which have slowly been getting worse over the months and years. I then began the walk to the front of the office to make my next appointment and hit the road, when I was told that Laura, the workers’ comp “saint” of the practice, needed to see me before I left.

She told me that my case manager contacted them and told them that I was non-compliant with my scheduled appointments, and that I was also non-compliant with getting my medications filled each month. Now, Laura has been there since the beginning with me, so she (like me) knew that what the case worker was saying was complete bunk. Before I could even say anything, Laura told me that she had already faxed more than sixty pages worth of documentation to them, to let them know that they are either full of crap and are trying to jerk me around again, or that they are incompetent. (My words, not hers.) I mean, how many times have I bitched here myself about how nearly every damn month I have to make multiple calls, multiple visits to the pharmacy, and often still I’m not “allowed” my medications until days after they’ve forced me to run out?

Based on what they are claiming, they are now only willing to pay for one doctor visit every three months – while certain medications that I take require me to be seen every thirty days. (And it sure sounds like their eventual goal may be to straight up “kick me out” or void their obligation to me.) So, this is what I have to deal with now. And I really need some dumb shit like this, right now, when my plate is already overflowing with stuff that is pushing my health and emotions to their limits.

But that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow, gathering up all of the current information about whoever is my acting case manager, figuring out which of my attorneys handles this type of issue, and probably trying to figure out how to get records from my pharmacy – and maybe a statement from the pharmacy techs who know how I regularly get the runaround – and get everything in some kind of order, to where I can start making calls on Friday.

I had a good day today, and I do want to blog about it at some point, but I’m still furious about this. Yes, it’s all easily, easily refutable… and there’s absolutely no way that I won’t win if this gets forced into another IC hearing or actual court case… but the fact that I have to do it at all, and that they still seem determined to deny me as much of my treatment as they can. I don’t understand how any human could or would take a job like that, where if they complete their task or reach their goal, a person’s life is ruined.

If I keep talking about it I’m not going to be able to sleep again tonight, but that’s the gist of how my Wednesday went. I’m glad Genesee is still in town, because today I had to just pretend that yesterday didn’t happen… just for this one day, so that my brain wouldn’t have a meltdown from immediately trying to fix all of this. I already spent the entirety of Tuesday night through dawn on Wednesday wide-awake, sitting in bed with my phone, looking up countless things regarding my case and treatment, and sending them to the printer so I could compile and highlight them later.

When there is a reliable, well-documented, years-long pattern of delaying or denying a patient’s medication or treatment, when multiple hearings and court cases have already made it clear that the patient is legally entitled to all of it… even if it’s done in a way that technically isn’t in violation of their obligation – you’d still think it might reach a point where a judge would see that it’s nothing less than harassment, and I have to believe that one of that patient’s litigating attorneys would smell blood in the water at that point, so to speak. I’m not a squeaky wheel. Why do they want to push it to that point?

(Okay, tomorrow’s entry will be a positive one. I just had to let this out, for better or worse.)

Might as well continue my bitching into Tuesday. 😒 Had to get up really early for my appointment with Dr Walter… and everything was routine until he asked me if I would be willing to be seen by a new physicians’ assistant that they have added to the office. 😳😟 I think they actually added two other doctors as well… but like he and I were discussing, ever since the big changes that were made about six months ago they’ve been struggling to try and keep up with appointments, paperwork, insurance stuff, medicare stuff, workers comp stuff, etc.

So while I’m glad (for them) to see that they’ve added some auxiliary people that will help evenly distribute the workload, it’ll definitely take a while to get used to the new guy. 🙁 Dr Walter isn’t going anywhere, so if my condition changes he’ll be able to handle it, but that was his point… my condition has been relatively stable for a long time now, so my appointments are really just about prescription refills rather than treatment. 🤕 That’s why he felt like I was a good candidate to go to the new guy – freeing up Dr Walter (someone with a lot of seniority) to choose appointments with patients he still has a chance of repairing. 😏 And to be honest, it could be interesting to bounce ideas off of new guy – since on most days I still struggle to just reach “okay” … so fresh ears and eyes could help me in the long run.

After that, I didn’t really feel like going to the Social Security office to handle my insurance enrollment issues… so as soon as I got home I was on the phone again. 😐 I’m not sure why it took as long as it did, but just enrolling in the dental part of my Medicare Advantage plan took over a half hour. And for me, someone who gets super twitchy if I have to be on the phone for more than a few minutes, it may as well have been three or four hours. 😣

I ended up calling it a day around 3pm, even though there was still stuff that I could (should?) have made calls about. Couldn’t get through to the hospital again, despite definitely calling during business hours, and so far they haven’t returned my calls. 😠 That’s fine though… I’m fine just sitting here and waiting until another notice for those bills arrive, and another, and another. I mean, I’ll call again, but if they don’t seem interested in dealing with it, then I’m not gonna be terribly interested either. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Strangely, despite twitching out over the obscene amount of time that I spent on the phone today, I’m still feeling enough of a burst of energy that I’m gonna try to work on a few things around the house. I’ve got a couple of friends who have been hinting heavily that they’d like to come over, so I feel kind of obliged to make it look less like the house of a single guy and his white cat that’s in the process of being groomed. 😳🐱 But mostly I’m doing this stuff for myself, because the more organized and calm this place is, the more organized and calm it makes me. 😌

But after these crap days starting the week, I think tomorrow I’ll take at least half of the day off… maybe get my cameras organized and charged up, get the C64 Mini all updated, set-up, and hooked up. I dunno… Monday and Tuesday have me pretty grrr, so I really need to make tomorrow different.

Sometimes when you hear people talk about emotionally abusive relationships, they might say “Well, she knew what she was getting into when she got with him.” which implies that it’s the victim’s fault. 😟 But what I see is someone who may have been willing to give someone chance after chance to prove they weren’t that emotionally abusive person, because they care about the person and want to believe that things could change.

Well, sometimes they don’t change. 😔 And eventually, even though it’s difficult, even though you care about that person, if their actions are really messing you up… you do have to take responsibility for how you allow yourself to be treated and get yourself out of that situation. That person might actually even care for you as well, but if it doesn’t prevent them from saying or doing hurtful things, why would a person want to keep subjecting themselves to it?

They may not realize how much what they are doing is affecting you, or they might not even realize that they are doing it at all. 😐 Who knows… they might know exactly what it’s doing but not be able to stop themselves from doing it. No matter the case, you have to do what’s right for you, even if that makes you “the bad guy” in their eyes. And if they don’t think that what they’re doing is that bad, then “the bad guy” is exactly the way you’ll seem to them. 😒

*sigh* … 😞 and in almost all of those types of cases, it didn’t have to be that way…

Despite all my bitching, I can at least say that I’m doing better than I was several months ago – at least regarding my anxiety, my “twitchy”, and whatever other random weird mental things affect me. 😵 I’m obviously going to have setbacks, where I kinda just retreat into my shell(like today), but considering that just a few months ago I wasn’t talking to hardly any of my friends, wasn’t really visiting with Mom and Dad, had no desire to do pretty much anything… where I’m at right now is objectively better, even though a lot of times it doesn’t feel that way to me.

But I’ve been back on email with Dad for a couple months now, after essentially abandoning email as a whole over a year ago… and I know, it sounds weird, and it’s even harder to explain how “anxiety” and “email” can go together… but yeah, more emails, more visits, reaching out to friends – slowly, one at a time… I’m doing so much more than I was able to or wanted to do just a handful of months ago.

I don’t necessarily like admitting how messed up my brain can be, but what can I do? It’s me. 😐 So I think it’s fair to look at my slow but steady progress on these dumb, sometimes inexplicable anxiety issues and feel at least a bit better about it. I know I don’t function like a “normal” human, not by any stretch of the definition… and I know that my occasional communication drop-outs or disappearances by me are still frustrating and hard for friends and family to understand – but they pretty much “get me” now, at least as best as I can be “gotten” I suppose.

This proves that I should always make “after the fact” posts, because despite being all geared up with my medical and workers comp projects, I ended up having Cassi come down and stay over last night… which was actually just the mental break that I needed from all of that stuff. 🙂 I mean, I did keep working on it as she was here, but with her as a distraction it kept it all from consuming my brain and occupying 100% of my thought cycles as I worked. 😳

But while she was here (among other progress) I got names, numbers, and addresses for every local doctor that may be accepting new patients, every local urgent care that appears to offer services greater than the “I skinned my knee” or “My butthole really itches” type stuff, and every oral surgeon in the area so I can get more serious about getting my remaining wisdom teefs cut out. 😬 I also got new info from BWC and my BWC Rx provider, so that stuff is in much better shape as well. And the pharmacy was also updated, so my meds might possibly, hopefully, maybe get filled in a more timely fashion. 🤨👨🏻‍⚕️

Now that I think about it, I probably got more done with her here than if she wasn’t. 🤨 And without getting twitchy. 🤷🏻‍♂️ She worked on several things that she needed to do as well, taking advantage of the relative peace and quiet here compared to her house full of family. 😌 Of course she gave her brain a break as well (the main point of her staying) by making and painting some picture frames, and catching up on the last few episodes of NCIS that she still had to watch on Netflix. 👱🏻‍♀️📺 I think Maven was even happy for the unexpected visit, ‘cuz she made up to Cassi way more than usual this time. 😸

We talked quite a bit about what’s going on with my health at the moment, along with all kinds of random thoughts that come along with that topic… so it was nice to be able to talk some of that stuff out with her. 👦🏻👱🏻‍♀️ I’m not exactly sure what the plan will be for tomorrow and Friday. 😐 Now that I’ve got all this info compiled I imagine I’ll start calling someone… meh… I’ll figure it out when that time gets here. I’m gonna stay in chill mode for the rest of the evening if possible.